Last Thursday, besides to be national holiday in Brazil, a tribute to Tiradentes, in this day in 1792, he was executed. It is also when was born the British writer Charlotte Bronte. This year she would be celebrating her 200th brithday. This post is a summary of four articles. The first was published at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Bront%C3%AB. The second with the incomplete title above, was published at http://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/charlotte-brontes-200th-birthday-marked-in-britain. The third was published at http://www.likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/bookReview.pl?BookReviewId=5517. The fourth was published at http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/janeeyre/themes.html
Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) was an English novelist, the oldest of the three Bronte sisters who survived into adulthood and whose novels have become classics of English literature. Charlotte was born in Thornton in Yorkshire, the third of the six children of Maria and Patrick, an Irish Anglican clergyman. In 1821, her mother died of cancer, leaving five daughters and a son to be taken care of by her oldest sister Elizabeth. In 1825, the two oldest sisters died of tuberculosis. After that, her father removed her from school and she acted as guardian of her younger sisters. She and her surviving siblings: Branwell, Emily and Anne, created their own fictional worlds, and began chronicling the lives and struggles of the inhabitants of their imaginary kingdoms. Charlotte wrote about a imagined country named, Angria. Between 1831 and 1832 Charlotte continued her education at Roe Head in Mirfield. She returned to Roe Head as a teacher from 1835 to 1838. In 1839 she took up the first of many positions as governess to families in Yorkshire. In 1842 Charlotte and Emily travelled to Brussels to enrol at the boarding school run by Constantin Heger and his wife Claire Zoe. In return for board and tuition Charlotte taught English and Emily taught music. In October 1842 they returned to England when their aunt ,who had look after the children after their mother's death, died. Charlotte returned alone to Brussels, but a year later returned to Haworth. Charlotte first manuscript, "The Professor", did not secure a publisher, although she was heartened by an encouraging response from her publisher. Charlotte then sent a second manuscript in 1847. Six weeks later Jane Eyre: An Autobiography was published. It tells the story of a governess, Jane, who after difficulties in her early life, falls in love with her employer. They marry, but only after the insane first wife, of whom Jane initially has no knowledge, dies in a dramatic house fire. The book's style was innovative, combining Naturalism with Gothic drama, and broke new ground in being written from an intensely evoked first-person female perspective. Jane Eyre had immediate success and received favourable reviews. In January of 1854, Charlotte married Arthur Nicholls, who had long been in love with her. She became pregnant soon after her wedding, but her health declined and she died with her unborn child, on March 1855, aged 38. The Professor, the first novel Charlotte had written was published posthumously in 1857.
The 200th birthday of Charlotte Bronte, whose intense and passionate vision of rural life on "Jane Eire" has haunted generations of readers, was being marked in Britain on Thursday (April 21). Fans are hosting a birthday party in the house in northern England where Charlotte and her sisters Emily and Anne grew up and wrote their books. The birthday highlights the enduring global popularity of the Bronte sisters, whose works are seen as among the most important ever written by female authors. A ballet version of "Jane Eire" is opening next month, while the National Portrait Gallery is hosting an exhibition in her honour. The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, a remote village on the edge of moors in Yorkshire, draws tens of thousands of visitors from around the world each year, while the sisters' books are staples of British bookshops and school curriculums. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte were a clergyman's daughters who wrote for pleasure and dreamt of becoming published authors but feared they would not be taken seriously because they were women. They therefore adopted the pseudonyms of Currer, Elis and Acton when they sent their books to publishers in the 1840s. The biographer of Charlotte, Claire Harman told the BBC this month that "she was someone who both longed to be 'forever known', but clung to anonymity in order to achieve it, a woman much more concerned about truthfulness than personal fame and someone who felt compelled to put into words her own terrble sufferings... as being the only way to deal with them."
Jane Eyre is not a pure romance novel. It is a complex work combining elements of the coming-of-age story, the gothic novel, and more. Despite its complexity, though, the heart and soul of Jane Eyre is the passionate love between Jane and her employer, Edward and it is their love story that is the most memorable element of the novel. Jane Eyre is an orphan of no wealth or social standing. When she loses her parents, she is taken in by her relarives, the Reeds, who treat her with contempt and even cruelty. When she is old enough to go to school, Jane goes to Lowood, where the living conditions are horrible. The food is foul, the headmarter is cruel and sanitation is so bad that an epidemic causes several deaths among the pupils. Jane survives, but loses her best friend Helen. This episode was based on Charlotte's experiences at the Clergy Daughters School, and Helen is based on her sister Maria, who died there. When conditions at Lowood improve, Jane stays on as a teacher until she is eighteen, and then accepts a position as the governess at the Edward Rocherster's house. Jane and Edward slowly get to know each other, and she falls in love with him. Jane is certain that Edward will marry the wealthy and beautiful Blanche Ingraham, but to her surprise Edward asks her to marry him. Both Jane and Edward are such passionate characters, but Jane's passion is tempered with sense, while Edward is all sensibility. Despite her social powerlessness Jane is one of the strongest women characters in fiction and by sticking to her principles she is rewarded with true love. Jane Eyre has been in print since its publication in 1847 and has been filmed many times.
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. Love versus autonomy. Over the course of the book, Jane must learn how to gain love without sacrifing and harming herself in the process. Her fear of losing her autonomy motivates her refusal of Edward's marriage proposal. Religion. Throughout the novel, Jane struggles to find the right balance between religion moral duty and earthly pleasure. She encounters three main religious figures: Mr. Brocklehurst, Helen and St. John Rivers. One illustrate the dangers and hypocrisies perceived in the 19th century Evangelical movement. Another is too passive for Jane to adopt as her own. The last uses the Christianity for ambition and self-importance. Social class. Jane Eyre is critical of Victorian England's strict social hierarchy. Charlotte's exploration of the complicated social position of governess is perhaps the novel's most important treatment of this theme. Jane is a figure of ambiguous class standing. Jane's education are those of an aristocrat, because Victorian governess, who tutored children in etiquette as well as academics, were expected to possess the "culture" of the aristocracy. Yet, as paid employees, they were treated as servants. Jane herself speak out against class prejudice at certain moments in the book. Gender relations. Jane struggles continually to achieve equality and to overcome oppression. In addition to class hierarchy, she must fight against patriarchal domination, against those who believe women to be inferior to men and try to treat them as such.
